My name is Merry Walker and I’m attending the COP 15 as a University of Michigan College of Engineering representative. I am absolutely honored to be a delegate for Michigan and hope to gain insight into how science/technology influences policy-making on issues that are inherently science-based but policy-influenced. I believe that government interactions are absolutely crucial to the long-term success of many technical interventions. The complex relationship between technology, business, and policy has slowly been revealing itself to me over time as I’ve been actively seeking opportunities to take classes, attend conferences, and explore new avenues. These experiences have all made me much more aware that the decisions and recommendations that I make as an engineer must make sense in the overall scape of things. Its with this that I enter my next stage of life wondering where I would like to take my career–toward technology or policy. I hope that I don’t have to chose one over the other and that I can combine my passion for policy with my appreciation for engineering. This trip to Copenhagen should help further my understand of how I can strategically blend the two of these important, but all too often disjointed, fields.

Written by MERRY WALKER.